Coping Skills
by gloryblastit
Summary: Ellie wants to see Craig at rehab, against her better judgement.
1. Chapter 1

No energy for this. Plus it was getting later. Time was just slipping by like something. Damn it. Can't describe it, this sensation that time is flying. I typed and typed away, doing article after article, trying to forget myself.

Jesse would walk by, tall and good looking and so self assured. Would I ever feel that self assured? Sure, I faked it all the time. I was smart, I was in college and writing at this paper and doing okay. But sometimes on the inside I felt lost or broken or damaged. I wanted to grab the nice razor blade and really feel the pain instead of this insulated numbness. But no. I wouldn't do that. I was better now. Years of group had taught me coping skills. I'd snap that rubber band for all it was worth.

I guess I felt some sort of comfort in the glow of my computer screen, or maybe it felt like escape. It was where I wanted to stay, curled up in its light, not thinking, not feeling anything.

"Hey, frosh," Jesse said on his millionth trip by my desk. He kissed my forehead and I smiled my tired grateful little smile at him.

"Almost done?" he said with that slight raising of his eyebrows.

"Yeah. I'm almost done," Another tired smile and he went on his way. He wanted to go and get a drink at the trendy place and so did I. I thought I had been trying to be careful with alcohol since it never did my mother any good. Maybe I was starting to see her point when I drank. It was nice and warm and made the pain sort of blur. Made the horrible things seem not so bad or at least like they didn't matter so much.

I finished up my sentence and saved the damn thing, shut everything down and looked around the darkened room for Jesse. We slung jackets over our shoulders and took off, and I was already thinking of that first long swallow of the whisky I would order. That whisky would make the pain ebb, would make what Jesse would say to me seem more interesting, would make it matter less that he wasn't Craig.

Oh I had been so good about Craig. Seen through his lies at last, his desperate bright eyed cocaine lies and his kisses like Judas and he never loved me, not like I loved him. I finally saw it for what it was, saw that he used people to get what he wanted or what he needed, saw that Craig was damaged beyond my ability to help.

Jesse saw it, too. Sure it was easy to see when you were on the outside, he said Craig crapped all over me and I went back for more. I had confused my friendship with him for love, maybe. Or I wanted it to be more, wanted something Craig didn't and he just used that at the end.

The trendy place beckoned with its neon lights and humid atmosphere and we went in like being enveloped, wrapped up tight in oblivion.

"What will you have, Ellie?" My name was jarring when he said it, more personal somehow. It almost made me cringe when he said Ellie. Craig used to call me Elle.

"Whiskey," I said, and shades of my mother came back to haunt me. I shouldn't drink, I knew that, and felt the guilt begin to creep up my nerve endings, through my capillaries and into my brain. But I couldn't help it, I was in too much pain. Maybe it was better than slitting an artery, maybe it was better than shooting heroin, happiness was a warm gun after all.

It arrived, sweet dark amber drink with its depths, its swirling and muted colors, beautiful. I closed my eyes and sipped, lovely little sips and felt tension start to slide away. Why couldn't I be happy with Jesse? He was attractive, smart, caring, ect, ect. Why couldn't that be good enough for me?

One little glass of whiskey became another and conversations ran into each other like water, flowing here and there with little to obstruct them and I was careful not to mention Craig, not to let Jesse know or see how much it bothered me.

The night hung now on that triangle point where one more sip would cause nausea and vomiting and the spinning world, the whole world to tip off its axis and spin out of control.

"Let's go," I heard myself say from a million miles away and Jesse nodded somewhere below me and I realized with an unhappy start that I was a sip too late, and the whole evening's ingesting came up in one glut, and it splattered on the side of the road in all its sick rainbow hues.

Put to bed somehow, didn't even recall how, but I woke up with a skull buster and groaned. 'This is what you deserve,' the quiet sinister voice spoke up, and I had to agree. The sun came in full force and I thought it might destroy me, like I might be a corpse unable to handle direct sunlight. My skin cracking, hair turning to dust.

"Late night?" Marco said, bearing a steaming cup of coffee. Sweet sweet boy and there were echoes of that other morning, Craig coming down off his high, his nose running, dressed only in a pair of jeans. I had the coffee then, I was the together girl on that side of things. Craig looked younger somehow partially undressed, and long as I've known him we had never slept in the same house, I'd never seen him when he first woke up, his hair all messy and curly.

"Thanks," I said, sounding slow and sick, sounding like my mother, and the layers of self loathing were impossible to calculate at that point. I took the cup from him and sipped, my stomach cramping as I dared to put more liquids into it.

Sitting by the window, unbothered by the sun, sipping another cup of coffee, the boys all gone. The heart wants what it wants. I was tired of always denying myself things that I wanted, things that I needed. I was tired of always being last on my list of priorities. I wanted to see Craig. I needed to see him. So I was going to.

Hop a plane, find this place Joey stuck him in. Surely they had visiting hours. He was sick again. I'd sort of missed the bi-polar thing, that was Ashley's and she let him down. Now she was in love with Jimmy as though Craig had never invaded her life.

I hated flying, hated the trapped pent up feeling of being in that smooth capsule of the plane, moving so fast that it didn't feel like moving at all. Off the plane I rented a car and drove to Joey's new place, the car having that simonized ultra clean smell, three tree shaped air fresheners hanging off the rear view mirror.

"Ellie," Joey said with his mouth in a little O of surprise.

"Hi, Joey. I'd like to visit Craig," Dispense with bullshit. Down to business. I wanted to see Craig.

Joey took me there, and we were mostly silent as he drove along straight expanses of highway. He'd grown a goatee again. I noticed gray in it. I'd noticed a few grays in my own hair, wiry silvery little things, old before their time.

"I've got some errands to do. Besides I figure you might want to visit him alone," he said, and I nodded, and silently thanked him for that. I went across the sunny parking lot, my shoes clicking loud on the asphalt. There was nothing out hear to muffle the sound. Everything was raw, trees upended by the roots. Inside the building the lobby was cool, the stone floor slippery, my shoes making a different sort of sound on that floor.

I asked the smooth faced receptionist about visiting him, my voice sounding nervous and cracking. I was nervous, I felt electricity in my blood stream knowing he was here in this building somewhere. I had to wait while someone went to see if he wanted to see me, and the waiting was a funny sort of time, incriminations crept in. 'What are you doing here?' 'You think this is a good idea?' Cryptic questions without answers.

"Ellie Nash?" a staff person said to me from a crack in a door beyond the secretary. I nodded and stood up.

"He'll see you. Come with me," she said, and I followed her obediently through that door and down a hall to a door she unlocked with a key. I don't know what I was expecting but it was just a hallway and a dining room off of that.

"He's in there," she said, and left me. I wondered into the room, seeing a lot of people older and more haggard looking than Craig, though quite a few of the women had eyes that reminded me of my mother. And then I saw him, wearing clothes I had never seen before, a shirt with a collar instead of his usual rock tee shirts, faded blue jeans.

"Craig?" He looked up and smiled, that smile that has already broken my heart.

"Hi, Ellie,"

I stood there not knowing what to do, not really knowing why I came here. Was it because I loved him? But he has made it clear, time and time again, that he doesn't love me.

"Let's go to my room," he said, and walked out of that room, past the nurse's desk and down another hall. I followed him, my mouth dry, my headache starting to come back pulse by pulse. Oh what was I doing here?

In his room, just a bed and a single bureau, he shut the door and sat on the bed. I sat in a chair.

"I didn't think you'd come," he said slowly, "I didn't think you wanted to see me anymore,"

Seeing him was overwhelming. I didn't know what to say. I didn't want to see him anymore. I wanted to be done with him, wash my hands of him and his problems and his games. What was it that kept pulling me back? He was better for my numbness than any razor. I thought that might be the real reason. When I was around Craig I could feel things.

"I know, well, I wanted to see you," I looked at him, he was thinner than he was before he left for Vancouver, his clothes hung a bit. And he looked so much older. In high school he'd been kind of baby faced cute but that was gone. He was all sharp angles and five o'clock stubble, and there had been pain in his eyes before but it was different now.

"I wanted to…" I started but choked up, started to cry with all that was overwhelming me. I wanted him to love me like I loved him and wasn't it convenient for me to visit him while he was trapped in this place? I shouldn't have come, I shouldn't have come, that thought repeated itself in a mantra in my head.

"Ellie, come here," he said, and opened his arms to me and I went into them gratefully, hung onto his thin shoulders, felt the beating of his heart. I was where I wanted to be because I was a selfish girl. I didn't care that he didn't love me, that he shouldn't be comforting me when he was dealing with this drug addiction and all the other things, his past and the bi-polar that colored all of his presents. I'd always asked of him, and everyone else, far more than they could give.

"Ellie, what's wrong?" His voice so soft, so nice and caring, hearing him talk to me like that made me cry harder and cling to him harder and I felt so out of balance. Like I was where I should be and where I shouldn't be at the exact same time.

"Shhhh, it's okay, Ellie, honey…shhhh,"

I looked up at him, the tears still streaming, I was still in his arms. He leaned down then and kissed me, this time not in a cocaine haze but for real, his kiss slow and gentle and I closed my eyes. I felt that things were in balance for the first time in my life.


	2. Chapter 2

Balance. Is that what it was, how it was? Was kissing a bi-polar cocaine addict who'd never ever chosen me being in balance? I remembered that time at the wedding gig, the shiny metal kitchen things all around us, and he'd given me the friend speech. A speech I'd heard before, from him and a thousand others. 'You're my friend, my really really good friend,' and I'd cringe because I didn't want to be the friend. I wanted to be something more.

Still kissing him, his kiss soft and insistent and I somehow never wanted it to end. Damn Jesse and his skewed view, damn Marco and his disapproving looks, damn Ashley and her cautionary tales , damn Manny for knowing more for once.

He pulled away, looked down at me with a sweet neediness. So that's what it was. He was vulnerable and I was playing on that, sucking it like a vampire in a trashy novel, like a journalist chasing an ambulance. Desperate. Desperate described this better than balance.

"Craig, listen, I'm not sure I should have come," He listened, kept looking at me and I felt ashamed of myself for focusing so much on me, making my needs paramount when he was dealing with things, with issues that would, that were taking up time. He didn't say anything and what could he say? At the airport he told me he meant what he said, but which part?

I moved away from him, shook my head. What did I want from this? Why couldn't I know my own motivations better? I'd wanted him, Ashley and Manny's sloppy seconds but I didn't care. That whole summer we hung out I tricked myself into believing he liked me, too.

I had a long drive ahead and it was getting late. There were classes and The Core and Jesse and I just picked up and left like some impulsive…kid. That's how I was acting, like a kid who would do anything to get what she wanted.

He sat on the bed, patient. I guess he wasn't going anywhere. I shook my head again, like I was trying to erase the thing I'd just said.

"So, how has it been here?" I said, sitting next to him. I felt myself slipping into the mode of that summer we hung out, friends who could talk about things that bothered us or things that were happening.

"Okay, I guess," he said, his voice soft, eyes down. We were damaged, we'd broken something, maybe. I didn't push it, if he didn't want to tell me real things than that was okay. It had to be.

"Good," I said, my tone matching his. He was still so beautiful, despite the slight emaciation, the hollow eyes, the addict's aura. So beautiful, wounded eyes, hurting everyone he ever got close to. God was that seductive.

"How's college?" he said, and I just couldn't believe we were making small talk. I hated small talk. But we were in a small talk place. Hurt beyond words, I guess.

"Oh, you know, it's good. A little stressful at times but mostly…good,"

I wanted to snap my rubber band but I didn't want him to see, didn't want him to have reminders that I was fucked up, too. Let him be the fucked up one for once. He could carry that burden. I was sick of it. So I chewed the inside of my cheek instead.

A little knock at his door and he looked up almost guilty, like I shouldn't be in here or something. I scanned the room for an escape route. A nurse brought him a pill and a plastic cup filled with water and he took it dutifully and she left. I just stared at him, wide-eyed. That must have been the bi-polar pill, pills he probably wasn't taking in Vancouver.

"Okay, well, I guess I'm gonna go," I said, and stood up to show that I meant it. He stood up, too.

"Thanks for coming," he said, his voice still so soft and I remembered this book I had read once called Ordinary People and in that book a character had tried to commit suicide and when his family visited him in the hospital he would always say that, 'thanks for coming'.

"You're welcome," I stepped toward him and hugged him, squeezing him like maybe I'd never let go.


	3. Chapter 3

The sun just hanging there out the window, getting all caught between the tree leaves, mostly evergreens. Late afternoon hazy light and I'm sipping red wine with Joey. We were having dinner. I'd already called Jesse on my cell and told him I was in Calgary. He didn't know that was where Craig went for rehab so the name of the town meant nothing to him.

"I'm glad you came," Joey said, sipping his own glass of wine, "it's good for Craig,"

"Is it?" I was so far from knowing what was good for any of us. This might be the worst thing.

"Oh yeah. Of course. He needs his friends right now,"

I liked the way the sun looked, all late summer hazy gold, liked the slightly bitter taste of the wine though wine tends to give me a headache. Liked being here with Joey because he was a link to Craig. 'You are pathetic' the narrowed eyed mean girl who lived curled up in my brain hissed at me, and as usual I had to agree with her. Craig had loved Ashley. I know he did. Aloof and cool Ashley. That didn't quite describe me. Craig had loved Manny, in a different way but he still did, always going back to her like the siren on the rocks.

I wished he loved me.

"I worry about him, you know? He's getting older and, there's more choices, and I…I just worry,"

I felt bad for Joey. Craig seemed to be making a lot of bad choices. One bad choice, maybe. One mistake. Was that so hard to forgive? Because at the airport with him I wanted to never forgive him, cut him clean out of my life, have some pride for once. Have some pride when it came to him. Why did he make me want to act so foolish? I shook my head, sipped my wine, listened to Joey's voice as he told me how much Craig worries him. I nodded in perfect understanding.

My mind drifted back to the summer I hung out with Craig, every day, and it was so hot in that garage of his. Sometimes then I was so happy, pretending he was developing the same feelings for me that I was feeling for him. Living in my own pretend little world and sometimes it crashed around me, and I saw that he was still in love with Ashley. Caught him looking at her picture once. I wanted to rip it up.

I wanted to believe what he said at the airport, that he meant it when he said he loved me. I wanted to believe him when he kissed me backstage at the concert. But I was faithless.

I had more wine because Joey offered it, and my mother tried to guilt me, the guilt mother who also lived in my head.

"Craig's not a bad kid," Joey was saying, "but he's had a lot to deal with," I nodded. I know he did but I did, too. I wasn't using cocaine, I wasn't lying to everyone and about everyone, I wasn't, wasn't doing any of those things.

Night time. Night time at last, inky darkness pressing on the car windows as I drove back to the rehab place, barely able to remember my way on the unfamiliar roads. It was too late to visit if they had visiting hours but I'd make something up. I was good at lying if I had to. It was all lies anyway.

Past the guard with some paper thin story about leaving and only having tonight to see him, a fabric of lies and half-truths that somehow worked and gained me admittance.

"Ellie?" Craig said, my name half a question and half surprise, "what are you doing here?"

He was in his room, dressed in the flannel pants and t-shirt he wore as pajamas. Maybe I'd woken him.

"I…I don't know," I just stood there like an idiot and the voice in my head that tried to keep me in line shouted at me, 'why don't you leave him alone!' I had no answer. I had no answer for anything.

"I had to see you…I guess," Lame. I looked at my stylish pointy shoes. What the hell happened to me? I used to dress exactly how I wanted, I didn't care what anyone thought, now I was dressing to impress people, dressing to fit into the business world. My hair was sleek and stylish, too, no more tiny braids and wild colors. My make-up was subdued. No more black or blue lipstick, charcoal black eyes. I was tired of being subdued. Tired of being stuffed into this little box to please everyone else, even Craig. Maybe especially Craig. For a split second standing in front of him I wanted myself back, the me I was before I ever even cared about him.

He stood near his bed, rubbing his eyes, blinking at me. I was sick of these games. With my index finger I followed the slightly raised line of a scar on my arm. That had been a better way of dealing with things, the cutting, better than lusting over and yearning for this boy who wouldn't want me.

"I'm sorry, Craig. I shouldn't have come. I'm gonna go," I turned to walk away but he held my arm.

"Ellie, wait. Listen to me. I meant what I said. I love you. I do. The coke, that was stupid, it was stupid but it doesn't change it, it doesn't change how I feel. It's hard for me, though. It's hard for me to say it…I don't know why," he sat on the edge of his bed still holding onto my arm, "sit, okay?"

I sat. I liked the warmth from his hand encircling my forearm.

"When I was seeing Ashley, I loved her, you know? But I couldn't tell her. I just couldn't,"

I licked my lips. I remembered this now, 10th grade when he was dating Ashley and she would tell me how she didn't think he loved her, not like how she loved him. He would never say it.

He shook his head, let his hand slide down my arm until his hand covered mine.

"Maybe it's because of my parents, my mom dying and my dad…maybe because I loved them and they left it made it hard to say it to other people. I'm really fucked up, Ellie, more than you know. I hide it. I hide a lot of it and I needed to do those drugs, and coke wasn't the only one…but I am trying to stop. Honest to God I am. But I love you. I do. Even though I'm afraid to say it. It's the truth,"


	4. Chapter 4

That was the truth? I looked at his large hazel eyes, his pale skin, that sincere look he was giving me. I felt the heat from his hand on top of my hand. Maybe we were beyond truth. Truth was a few exits back.

I looked around his drab little rehab room, filled with sturdy dorm furniture. He wouldn't stay here long and then it would be emptied of all his things, his guitar and his clothes and his sneakers and his leather jacket. It would be cleaned out and empty for the next down and out drug addict to come and try to get better.

It wasn't the truth. I bit my lip. It was so tempting when people told you the lies you wanted to hear. Why couldn't that reality be the right one? I squinted at him, trying to see what was real beyond his lies. If I squinted hard enough maybe I could see what was real.

"I love you, too," I said, and that, I knew, was the truth. Or was it? Was I maybe just obsessed with him? Was it maybe easier to think about him than my mother drinking her little nips and glasses of beer? Was it easier to think about him than my dad lost in Iraq on his never ending mission? It's just so much easier to lose yourself in things than to face things. I liked to be lost.

So I leaned in for another kiss, feeling the texture of his tongue with mine, feeling the smooth ridge of his teeth. Tasting his fear. He didn't like being here, I could tell. He didn't like being in places that made it clear to him that things were wrong. That's why he didn't like going to group. That's why he didn't like being in the psych hospital and he didn't like taking meds. And unlike Ashley and even Manny I liked to pretend and avoid things just as much as he did.

"Listen, Craig, it's late…" I knew I had to leave. And I knew I might never come back.

"Okay," he said, but closed his eyes in that sleepy sexy way and kissed me again. I couldn't resist. I was weak. I laid down on the bed, let him trail his hand down my body, let him kiss me with more and more passion, let him use me if that's what he was doing.

"No," I sat up, breathless. I'd never met someone like him, someone so hard to resist.

But I was up and going, arranging my clothes into some semblance of neatness, smoothing my hair with my hand. Humpty Dumpty couldn't go back together again. I hung on the edge of the doorway and whispered goodbye again. He smiled at me, and in that smile and his vacant eyes I saw that it was all lies again. He'd leave this place and probably go right back to the drugs, right back to his destructive life. I couldn't save him anymore.

I left, listening to the click of my pointy trendy boots on the asphalt, on the sidewalks. I got in my car, the overhead light coming on and dimly illuminating my mess of empty coffee cups and fast food bags rolled up and tucked into the corners. I swung my legs in and shut the door.

I drove and I knew where I was going. A McDonalds or a bar that had a bathroom. When I saw a place, a convenience store with a public bathroom I pulled into the parking lot, the weird orange halogen streetlights changing the colors of everything around me. I grabbed my purse and headed for the double glass doors and heard the little bell ring as I entered. The clerk, a young kid with a round puffy face glanced up at me.

"Can I have the key to the bathroom?" I said, and he nodded and retrieved it from under the counter. I took it from him, a big key on a black piece of rope. In the bathroom, the lights so harsh that I had to blink away from them, I set my purse on the edge of the sink. I rummaged inside of it until I found my razor.

It gleamed in the over bright fluorescent lights. I breathed deeply, my thoughts filled with Craig and all the pain he had caused. I couldn't seem to get over him. Didn't matter that he was hurting me, that he was taking and taking something from me I couldn't afford to give. Didn't matter, nothing mattered.

I drew the sweet sharp line of the razor across my forearms and watched, fascinated, as the line of blood welled up and then ran into the white porcelain sink.


End file.
